Request By:
Mr. Wilbert L. Ziegler
General Counsel
Kenton County Airport Board
Covington Trust Building
Covington, Kentucky 41011
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
As General Counsel for the Kenton County Airport Board, which operates the "Greater Cincinnati International Airport" (see KRS 183.132), you request our opinion relating to legal advertising. The members of the air board are appointed by the county judge/executive of Kenton County.
The airport is located on approximately 4,800 acres in Boone County, Kentucky. The airport serves principally the areas of Northern Kentucky, Southeastern Indiana and Southwestern Ohio, including the metropolitan Cincinnati, Ohio area. You say only a very small percentage of the passengers using the airport are from Kenton or Boone Counties, Kentucky.
Your question reads:
"The Kenton County Airport Board for purposes of publishing its regulations, advertising for bids, and other matters is required to advertise in accordance with the provisions of K.R.S. 424.110 et seq. In making a determination as to which newspaper is the legal and proper newspaper for purposes of Kenton County Airport Board legal advertisements, the 'publication area' for the Kenton County Airport Board must be determined.
"On behalf of the Kenton County Airport Board, I ask your opinion as to what is the 'publication area' applicable to the Kenton County Airport Board."
In OAG 80-328, copy enclosed, we declined to render an opinion as to the legal newspaper in Kenton County for publishing notices. Our declining to render an opinion was based on the fact of the multiplicity of statutory qualifications in KRS Chapter 424 and the pertinent facts and evidence underlying a most complicated newspaper history in that county. We said that our office is not organized or designed to assess properly that issue, and that it was one ultimately for the courts.
KRS 424.120(1)(a) requires generally that an advertisement for publication must be published in the "publication area".
KRS 424.110(1) defines "publication area" as follows:
"As used in KRS 424.110 to 424.370:
"(1) 'Publication area' means the city, county, district or other local area for which an advertisement is required by law to be made. An advertisement shall be deemed to be for a particular city, county, district or other local area if it concerns an official activity of each city, county, district or other area or of any governing body, board, commission, officer, agency or court thereof, or if the matter of which advertisement is made concerns particularly the people of such city, county, district or other area;"
Pursuant to KRS 183.370 (enacted in 1942, Ch. 10, § 2, but repealed by Acts 1960, Ch. 179, § 1), Kenton County acquired a large tract of land in Boone County in order to establish the Kenton County Airport Board. The statute expressly provided that a county could acquire land, either within or without the county for an airport. The extra-territorial acquisition was upheld in Kenton County Fiscal Court v. Richards, 291 Ky. 132, 163 S.W.2d 302 (1942) 303, the court pointing out that the land "did not become a part of Kenton County for general governmental purposes," but, for those latter purposes, remains a part of Boone County. (Emphasis added).
The Kenton County Airport Board's authority to condemn to expand its airport was approved in Wadsworth E. Mfg. Co., Inc. v. Kenton C. Airport Bd., Inc., Ky., 509 S.W.2d 270 (1974). The court observed that the Kenton County Airport Board acquired, controls and operates the Greater Cincinnati Airport located in Boone County, Kentucky, which since 1942 has been the principal airport serving approximately one and one-half million people living in Cincinnati, Ohio; Covington and Newport, Kentucky; and the general area around those communities. The court, in Wadsworth, above, held that under KRS 183.133(4) and (5) an airport board may acquire by condemnation any real property reasonably necessary for the establishment, operation and expansion of the airport wherever the land is located, so long as it is reasonably needed to serve the area for which the airport board was created.
In this peculiar situation, the geographical territory served principally relates, population-wise, to regions of the sister states of Indiana and Ohio.
However, at this point it becomes clear that under the literal wording of KRS 424.110(1), the "publication area" for the Kenton County Airport Board is Kenton County. This is true since the subsection provides that the "publication area" means the county for which an advertisement is required by law to be made. Further, the subsection provides that an advertisement shall be deemed to be for a particular county if it concerns an official activity of such county or of any board thereof. Here the operation of the Kenton County Airport, though conducted in the main in Boone County, is an official activity of the airport board, which was created by Kenton County and which is derivatively a board of Kenton County. This view is buttressed by the implication in Kenton County Fiscal Court v. Richards, above, that the airport operation is a part of Kenton County government for the specialized purpose of an airport. As the court in Richards pointed out, the airport board is not engaged in pursuing general governmental purposes for Kenton County. The court wrote in Department of Revenue v. Greyhound Corporation, Ky., 321 S.W.2d 60 (1959) 61, that "we conceive it to be our duty to accord the words of a statute their literal meaning unless to do so would lead to an absurd or wholly unreasonable conclusion." Our conclusion, we believe, is not absurd or unreasonable. It is practical and sensible. In connection with the court's preference for literalism in interpreting a statute, it is written in Sands, Sutherland Statutory Construction (4th ed.) Vol. 2A, § 46.03, p. 53, that "The argument is that the courts owe fidelity to the will of the legislature and that what a legislature said in the text of a statute is the best evidence of the legislative will or intent. The courts are therefore bound to give effect to the expressed intent of the legislature."